A 30-year-old Hawthorne man has been convicted of breaking into a stranger’s Long Beach home and repeatedly raping her at knifepoint in 2014.

Jurors on Thursday found Detrick Paul Richmond guilty of three counts of forcible rape, two counts of forcible oral copulation and one count each of first-degree burglary, residential robbery and dissuading a witness from reporting a crime, Deputy District Attorney Kelly Kelley said.

Richmond could face more than 125 years to life in prison at his sentencing scheduled for Jan. 18, Kelley said.

Authorities accused Richmond of climbing through the open kitchen window of a beachside apartment in Alamitos Beach around 5 a.m. on Sept. 7, 2014.

He then threatened to kill the woman who was alone inside before sexually assaulting her, sometimes holding the knife to her throat, Kelley said. The woman, a 41-year-old mother, had never seen Richmond before, according to the prosecutor.

She “lived every woman’s worst nightmare,” Kelley told jurors as trial began in Long Beach’s Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse on Nov. 4. “She woke up in the security and privacy of her own home to a complete stranger.”

Richmond’s defense attorney contended the sex was consensual.

She told jurors that Richmond and the woman had run into each other in an alley near the woman’s home while he was attending a party at a friend’s house.

The woman then invited Richmond back to her apartment, defense attorney Celine Bonillo-Swatek said during opening statements.

Richmond testified during the trial but apparently failed to sway jurors, according to Kelley.

“In the end, the issue was really consent or whether they believed the victim’s version of events or the story that the defendant told,” she said.

Prosecutors also contended that after the sexual assault, Richmond stole three designer purses and an iPhone from the woman before leaving through the kitchen window.

As he left, he threatened to come back and kill her if she called police, the prosecutor said.

The woman was able to give a detailed description of Richmond, and police arrested him two days after the attack, Kelley said.

They found him with a backpack containing the iPhone and discovered DNA linking him to the sexual assault, according to the prosecution.

Jeremiah Dobruck is the public safety and breaking news reporter at the Long Beach Press-Telegram. He's a SoCal native who has covered crime, courts and mayhem at news outlets in Los Angeles, Orange County and New York City since 2011.